The System of the World (28 page)

“There’ll be no such talk in this house!”

The speaker was a short, stout Welshman with a large jaw. He was wrapped in a bulky and bulging black cloak, as if he’d just come in from outside, and was making a sweep through the parlour on his way back to the kitchen. A brace of empty gin-bottles dangled by their necks between the fingers of his right hand, and a full one was gripped in his left. Daniel assumed the fellow was being wry, and chuckled some more; but the Welshman very deliberately swiveled his head around and gave Daniel a glare that shut him up. Most of the people in the room were now looking their way.

“Your usual, Saturn?” the Welshman said, though he continued to stare fixedly at Daniel.

“Have her bring us coffee, Angus. Gin disagrees with me these days, and as you have perceived, my friend has already drunk one bottle too many.”

Angus turned around and stalked out of the room.

“I am sorry!” Daniel exclaimed. Until moments ago he had felt
strangely at home here. Now, he felt more agitated than he had out in the alley.

The wretch on the floor went into a little fit of shuddering, and tried to jerk his unresponsive limbs into a more comfortable lie.

“I assumed—” Daniel began.

“That the words you were using were as alien to this place as the Calculus.”

“Why should the proprietor—I assume that’s what he was—care if I make such a jest—?”

“Because if word gets round that Angus’s ken is a haunt of such persons—”

“Meaning—?”

“Meaning, persons who have secretly vowed that the Hanover shall
not
be our next King,” Saturn croaked, so quietly that Daniel was forced to read his lips, “and that the Changeling
*
shall
be, why, it shall become self-fulfilling, shall it not? Then such persons—who are always in want of a place to convene, and conspire—will begin to come here.”

“What does it matter!?” Daniel whispered furiously. “The place is filled with criminals
to begin with
!”

“And that is how Angus likes it, for he is a past master among thief-takers,” Saturn said, his patience visibly dwindling. “He knows how it all works with the Watch, the Constables, and the Magistrates. But if the supporters of the Changeling begin to convene here, why, everything’s topsy-turvy, isn’t it, now the house is a heaven for Treason as well as Larceny, and he’s got the Queen’s Messengers to contend with.”

“I hardly phant’sy the Queen’s Messengers would ever venture into a place like this!” Even Daniel had the wit to mouth the name, rather than speaking it aloud.

“Be assured they would, if treason were afoot here! And Angus would be half-hanged, drawn, and quartered at the Treble Tree, ’long with some gaggle of poxy Jacobite viscounts. No decent end for a simple thief-taker, that.”

“You called him that before.”

“Called him what?”

“A thief-taker.”

“Naturally.”

“But I thought a thief-taker was one who brought thieves to justice, to collect a reward from the Queen. Not a—” But Daniel
stopped there, as Peter Hoxton had got a look on his phizz that verged on nausea, and was shaking his head convulsively.

“I see you’ve been sending my coal right up the fucking Chimney!” Angus proclaimed, stalking toward them. He had divested himself of the cloak and the gin-bottles and was now being followed, at a prudent distance, by a Bridewellish-looking girl with a mug of coffee in each hand.

“Rather, providing you with the service of keeping the fire going,” Saturn answered calmly, “at no charge, by the way.”

“I didn’t want it going to begin with!” Angus returned. “ ’Twas that lappy-cull who mewled and pleaded for a bit of warmth! Now you’ve gone and got it going again! There’ll be a charge for that!”

“Of course there will be,” Saturn said.

The coffee was served, and money changed hands, in the form of copper tokens, minutely examined by Angus.

“Now why do you say I should attend to the doings of Parliament?” Saturn asked, as they were beginning to sip their coffee. “What connexion could I possibly draw between the situation of the Duke of Cambridge
*
and your hole in the ground in Clerkenwell?”

“None whatever. Save that Parliament’s more loud and obvious doings may be used as a sort of screen or blind to cover arcane, subtile machinations that might reward your attention.”

“This is worse than being given no information at all,” Saturn grumbled.

A man entered solus, and began to look round the place. Daniel knew immediately it was their buyer. But rather than jumping to make their presence known, he settled deeper into his chair so that he could spend a few moments inspecting the newcomer. In silhouette against the glowing screen of curtains, he could easily be confused with an actual gentleman, for he wore a wig, clamped down by a hat with a vast brim folded upwards in the style then mandatory. A sword dangled from one hip. But when he stood, he crouched, and when he walked, he scuttled, and when he noticed things, he flinched. And when this man came over to the hearth, and accepted a chair pulled up by the uncharacteristically hospitable Peter Hoxton, Daniel perceived that his wig was stinking horsehair, his hat was too small, and his sword was more danger to himself, in its sheath, than it would’ve been to others, out of it. He nearly tripped over it twice, because every time he whacked it off a chair- or table-leg it jumped back between his ankles. He put Daniel in mind of a clown at St. Bartholomew’s Fair, got up to mock a gentleman. Yet the mere fact that he was trying so
hard earned him a sort of dignity, and probably counted for something in a house of this type.

“Mr. Baynes, Dr. Gatemouth,” said Saturn. “Doc, say hallow to him we are calling Mr. Baynes.”

“Dr. Gatemouth, ’tis a pleasure as well as an honour,” said the newcomer.

“Mr. Baynes,” Daniel said.

“Would you be one of the Gatemouths of Castle Gatemouth?”

Daniel had no idea what to do with this question.

“Doc is of a very old family of armigerous yeomen in the Gatemouth district,” prated Saturn, sounding bored.

“Ah, perhaps they knew some of my forebears,” exclaimed Mr. Baynes, patting his sword-hilt, “for I am nearly certain that Gatemouth Abbey lies adjacent to a certain vicarage where—”

“It is not his real name,” Saturn snapped.

“Of course, that is obvious, do you think I am a child? I was merely trying to make him feel at ease.”

“Then you failed. Let us speak of the Ridge, so that we may ease him out of this ken.”

Said to a real gentleman, these words would have provoked a duel. So Daniel at this point was one uneasy gager. But Mr. Baynes was unfazed. He took a moment to re-compose himself and said, “Very well.”

“Do you understand that the amount in play is large?”

“A large
weight
was bandied about, but this tells me little of the actual
amount
of Ridge, until the purity of the metal has been quoined.”

“How large a quoin do you propose to hack off?” said Saturn, amused.

“Large enough to balance my toils and sufferings.”

“Howsoever much you assay—assuming you truly
do
—you’ll find Doc, here, is no Beaker. The
amount
and the
weight
are as identical as the refiner’s fire can make ’em. And then what?”

“A transaction,” said Mr. Baynes, guardedly.

“But last time I had dealings with you, Mr. Baynes, you were in no position to move such a quantity of Ridge as Dr. Gatemouth has on his hands. A glance at your periwig tells me your fortunes have in no wise improved.”

“Peter Hoxton. I know more of your story than you of mine! Who are you to cast aspersions!?”

Now Daniel had scarcely followed a word of this, so dumbfounded was he by Mr. Baynes’s appearance. But around this time, he was able to formulate an explanation that fit the observed phenomena, viz.:
Mr. Baynes had wooden teeth that had been carved to fit a larger mouth. They were forever trying to burst free of the confines of his head, which gave him a somewhat alarming, horselike appearance when it was happening. For him, speech was a continual struggle to expel words whilst keeping a grip on his dentition. Therefore he spoke in a slow, deliberate, and literally biting cadence, terminating each phrase with an incredible feat of flapping his prehensile lips around his runaway choppers and hauling them back into captivity.

The sheer effort expended—so say nothing of the risk incurred—in casting this rebuke at Saturn, gave it telling weight. Peter Hoxton recoiled, fell back in his chair, and raised a hand to run it back through his hair.

Having thus cleared the floor, Mr. Baynes continued, “Supposing a cull did have the resources” (a very difficult word for him to…pronounce…requiring a lip-wrap fore and aft) “to engage in a Transaction of the magnitude contemplated by Dr. Gatemouth—would he come
here
to meet with a
stranger
? I think not! He would delegate the matter to an underling, who would in turn choose a trusted intermediary, to make the initial contact.”

Saturn grinned, which only made his unshaven face seem darker, and shook his head. “We all know there is only one coiner in the realm who can act on this scale. There is no need to flinch, I’ll not utter his name aloud in this place. You’d have us believe, I take it, that you are speaking on behalf of some lieutenant of his?”

“A great big one-armed cove, a foreigner,” Mr. Baynes allowed.

And now, a bit of a Moment. To this point, Mr. Baynes had been putting on a passable show. But it was bad form to have volunteered such information, and he knew it.

“You see, I do not bate at divulging such
data,
such is my confidence that he will deal only through me.”

Doc and Saturn nodded sagely, but the damage had been done, and Mr. Baynes knew, though he might not admit, it.

The syphilitic gager on the floor, who had appeared dead for a while, had been stirring ever since Mr. Baynes had made his entrance. Daniel supposed this was an effect of the way they’d rearranged the chairs, for Daniel had moved to a new spot between the wretch and his precious coal-fire, and was blocking what little warmth spread out of it. The gager now made noises that indicated he was sitting up. Daniel did not turn around to look—he did not have to, as Saturn was watching all with green disgust. Something told Daniel to rise and get out of the way.

He and most other Fellows of the Royal Society recognized syphilis and leprosy as distinct diseases, spread in different ways. But
most other persons had conflated the two diseases in their minds, and so recoiled from syphilitics in much the same way as they would from lepers. This explained everything about how Saturn was reacting now. Daniel, F.R.S. though he was, reverted to superstition in the clutch, and allowed the gager the widest possible berth as he half-crawled and half-staggered toward the hearth. Some of his limbs dragged senseless on the floor, while others moved in spasms, as if he were being stung by invisible hornets. Trailing his nest of filthy blankets behind him, he slouched on the hearth, completely eclipsing the light of the fire, and hunched even closer to it, rubbing his paralyzed hand with his twitchy one. His gray hair would be dangling and burning in the coals now if he, or someone, hadn’t wrapped it all up in a sort of bandage-turban atop his head.

“The questions that this foreign gentleman will ask of me, may be easily anticipated,” observed Mr. Baynes.

“Indeed,” Saturn returned. “The Ridge is from America.”

“As Dr. Gatemouth is known to have recently come over from Boston, no one phant’sied it came from
Guinea,
” Mr. Baynes said, with elaborate meanness. “The foreign gentleman will be curious: have rich new gold mines been discovered on the banks of the River Charles? Because if so—”

“If the foreign gentleman truly does represent the coiner you and I are thinking of, why, he must be a busy man, and disinclined to hear long tedious Narrations of pirate-exploits on the Spanish Main,
et cetera,
” Saturn said. “Does it not suffice for him to know that it is in fact Ridge? For the entire point of Ridge is that it may be confused with other Ridge, and it matters not where ’twas dug out of the ground.”

“The foreign gentleman thinks it
does
matter, and further, is ever
alert
for inconsistencies in Narrations. Indeed, in his world, where commerce is, of necessity, informal and
ad hoc
in the extreme, to tell a coherent Story is the sole way of establishing one’s credit.”

“Mr. Baynes is correct as far as that goes,” Saturn told Daniel in an aside. “Men of this sort are literary critics of surpassing shrewdness.”

“No convincing Tale means no Credit, and no Transaction. I am here, not to quoin your Ridge, but to assay your Story; and if I do not bring him a ripping pirate-yarn to-night, why, you are finished.”

An odd snuffing noise issued from the hearth, as if a handful of dust had been tossed on the coals. Daniel glanced over to see that the gager was rubbing feverishly at his eyes and his mouth. Perhaps the smoke had irritated his mucous membranes, and had made him sneeze and paw at the encrusted sores that so disfigured his face.
Daniel then noticed that the fire was blazing up, but producing a good deal more smoke than light. The smoke was drawing swiftly up the chimney, which was fortunate, because it had an evil, thick, reddish look.

He turned his attention away from the strange actions of the gager, and back to matters at hand: Mr. Baynes, who was still prating about the foreign gentleman, and an empty chair.

The empty chair demanded a second glance, and then a third.

Mr. Baynes himself was only just becoming aware that Saturn was gone. Both of them now turned to survey the parlour, supposing that their companion might have stood up to stretch, or to rid himself of his empty mug.

Twilight had come over Salisbury Square, but enough of it sifted in through the windows to show that Peter Hoxton was no longer in the room.

Most of that light was now blocked. The women who had been perched before the lace curtain were scattering away from it. One seized a fistful of skirt and hauled it clear of her ankles, and used the other hand as a flail to clear impediments out of her course: a straight line to the nearest exit. She looked as if she were of a mind to scream, but had more important things to do just now, and so all that came from her mouth was a sort of hooting noise.